Category: How To and Tips
Apocalypse Now? Dystopian World-Building in the Age of…Whatever the Hell this Is
By E.A. Smiroldo A funny thing happened on my way to writing a novel about life in the dystopian future. Surprise! The climate change Armageddon of my imagination turned out to be far better than what we were experiencing in reality. Even after finding a publisher for my climate fiction novel, The Silent Count, I […]
The Story Behind the Story by Elene Catrakilis
Elene Catrakilis My debut novel, Under an African Sky, is a story close to my heart because it’s set in South Africa, the country of my birth. In 1989, the country stood on the brink of change. The story follows two women from different backgrounds who share an unlikely friendship and must navigate a new […]
Why so Mean?
By Cindy Eastman Does harsh and critical feedback to writers make them better writers or can writers improve in a supportive and positive environment? We don’t have to slash and burn writers to make them better, do we? Writers’ sample chapters and essays are like chum in the water to a bunch of circling sharks…they […]
You Are Never Too Old to Pursue a Dream
One woman finds meaning in her senior years through writing. Dr. Susanne T. Eden Ed.D. I never set out to write this book. As it turned out, I had no choice. I was compelled. So how did I, an 80-something-year-old woman with a long career in education, come to write a book about health and aging? At […]
HOLD ON WHILE I SWITCH HORSES
By Christina Hamlett It seems only fitting in this Year of the Horse that I pen an equine-centric article about choosing horses, staying courses and recognizing whether you’re in the right race at all. The expression about not switching horses in midstream dates back almost two centuries and carries both positive and negative connotations. During […]
Whitney H. Murphy: On Creating My Graphic Novels
By Whitney H. Murphy It’s difficult to say when my writing journey began. Some might assume that it began with the little stories I drew up with crayons and misspelled words on the papers that I stapled together, in first grade. I can certainly thank my dad, who encouraged me to read the works of […]
Creating Cowboys
By Nan Reinhardt Confession? I don’t know any real cowboys. I read about them in the novels that my fellow western authors write; I’ve watched myriad TV westerns both new and old and rodeo videos galore. We had horses for fifteen years, so I’ve met lots of horsemen, some may even have thought of themselves […]
Back to Color, Back to Life: Behind My Book Sacred Curiosity By Britney Winn Lee
By Britney Winn Lee If you’ve noticed fewer fireflies lately, you’re not imagining it. The beetles that create those summer flashes of light are disappearing, victims of shrinking habitat. What fascinates me isn’t just their vanishing act, but how they work: a substance in their bodies mixes with oxygen to produce light without flame, without […]
The Magpie Way to Becoming a Writer
By Nina Schuyler There’s my desk. Here is a jar of my favorite pens, Pilot, Precise, V5, black ink. I keep a thesaurus here. While it’s not a room of my own (I wish, Virginia), it is a corner of the bedroom with a view—oak trees with mossy arms, squirrels doing astonishing acrobatics. Towers of […]
How I Found My Voice and Gained 130k followers
By Kerry Chaput A year ago, I cried. A lot. I’d racked up three hundred rejections over seven years, and my author dreams kept hitting wall after wall. I had written the best manuscript of my life, and you know what that led to? More rejections. At a writing retreat last spring, I had a […]
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